As an expecting parent, buying ahead for baby can be a difficult feat of imagination – how do you know what is essential for daily life with a baby when your daily life is going to change beyond all recognition? The most practical advice is to buy only what you really need and wait to see what you want after the baby is here.
Still, if you are from another country, you may not be familiar with the brands or manufacturing standards here, and may prefer to get your baby things in your home country. Buying baby things can then require a lot of advance planning and purchasing.
On the other end of the spectrum, those of you with minimalist tendencies can rejoice. You can just look around you and see evidence that different cultures have very different ideas of “essential” baby items, and realize how few things are really necessary to welcome a new baby into the world.
Most people fall somewhere in between. What are YOUR essential baby items? We’d love to hear from all types of parents. Please let us know your comments below, and over time we hope to create some of the following baby buying lists and more:
- Baby essentials list: the minimalist
- Baby essentials list: raising a baby thai style
- Baby essentials list: the traveller (esp. for parents that might have to travel w/newborn)
- Baby essentials list: the ultra hip mom
For general guidelines about choosing baby products in Thailand, see Buying for Baby. For suppliers, check our directory, or take your questions about specific products to our forums.
I am definitely a minimalist mommy! Little babies don’t actually need much at all. But the one item that I used endlessly for the first 4 months was a ring sling baby carrier. My daughter loved to be in and would usually just fall asleep. I wore her around the house when I needed to do some things, at the computer and when I went anywhere outside of the house. It was incredibly convenient! I actually ordered the ring sling from “Sleeping Baby Productions” as they have them in different materials. I found a solarveil one that breathes well in the hot weather and protects the baby from UV rays.
I wouldn’t call myself a hip mom, and I planned to be a minimalist, but in the end we turned out to have loads of baby stuff!
Excluding toys and clothes, the things we used most were..
- the crib (though shared mom/baby sleep is widely practiced in our home country, we rejected this idea and were totally happy about it)
- the stroller with fully reclinable back, and also adjustable to a sitting push-chair for later months, in my opinion, it should be chosen most carefully, we’ve been using ours every day for the 9 months since our son was born.
- the sling, as Jill commented above, it’s a great tool for soothing a fussy baby and keep yourself doing work around the house, however I used mine until my son was about 3 months, he became too tall and heavy, after that we switched to a Baby Bjorn carrier.
- the changing table, which can actually be any table with a changing mat on it.